Lenovo ZUK Z1 Review: Affordable Smartphone with Mighty features

Earlier this month, Lenovo launched there new Smartphone called ZUK Z1 in India. The smartphone is priced Rs 13,499 and comes with powerful specifications that completely justifies the price for smartphone. Smartphone comes in a metallic frame and features a Finger Print Sensor as its home key. Smartphone runs on a Cyanogen OS which is considered to be the key feature of the Smartphone.

Design

The body of ZUK Z1 is a metallic frame with diamond-cut edges. The metallic frame makes the ZUK Z1 look entirely different from other Lenovo devices. This metallic frame gives the smartphone a solid and sturdy look.

Image Source: Digital Trends

Front of the device features ambient light sensor, earpiece, Selfie camera above the display and a Finger Print Sensor as home button on the bottom of display. The volume and the power key are on the right side of the device. The back of ZUK Z1 is a thick plastic and is non-removable.

Image Source: Tech Reversed

The left side of the device features the dual Nano-SIM card tray. The 3-5 mm audio jack is located on the top-left corner of the device and the bottom of the device has speaker grill, microphone and Type-C USB port.

Display

The ZUK Z1 features a 5.5-inch full HD (1080 p) LCD Display with pixel density of 401 ppi (pixels per density). The display of the smartphone is quite bright and provides good viewing angles too while watching HD videos or playing games. The display is pretty good as per the price tag, however is not as clear as those on Super AMOLEDs.

Image Source: LiveMint

Hardware

ZUK Z1 is powered by a 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor and is supported with Adreno 330 GPU. The device comes 3 GB RAM and has 64 GB in-built memory. However, the device doesn’t features microSD card slot. Therefore, there is no option of expanding the memory of the device.

Image Source: Amazon

Software

One of the major feature of ZUK Z1 is that it runs on Cyanogen OS. The OS is based on the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop which is planned to be upgrade to Android v6.0 Marshmallow. The Cyanogen OS provides tons of customization options that includes Theme App which allows you to change wallpaper, icons, fonts, status bar and even boot the animation.

Image Source: Amazon

As per the reports of BGR.In, the interface of ZUK Z1 is very fluid, slick and snappy. The device did not lagged while navigating through the UI or while switching the apps. The Cyanogen OS of the device supports the double-tap feature to wake the screen up.

Camera

ZUK Z1 features a 13 mega-pixel main camera (Sony IMX214 sensor) with OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). The OIS feature is often found only in upper-range smartphones, so, it is one big advantage of ZUK Z1 as to feature OIS. The camera also supports 1080 p voice recording.

Image Source: Amazon

The Selfie camera of the device is an 8 PM shooter. As per the reports, the picture quality of the camera is good. The images clicked are neat and sharp, whether in or with out sunlight.

Battery and other Features

The ZUK Z1 is backed with a 4,100 mAh battery. However, it doesn’t feature Qualcomm’s quick charge feature. The battery backup of the phone is much appreciated as it gives 38 hours of talk-time backup and 580 hours of stand-by backup. Also, the smartphone charges pretty quickly.

The Smartphone also features Finger Print Sensor as its home key that helps the device to get unlocked much quicker. The finger print sensor works smoothly on the device as per the sources.

Image Source: ZUK.Mobile.com

The other features of ZUK Z1 includes Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth v4.0, GPS, 4G LTE connectivity on both the SIM cards.

Verdict

The ZUK Z1 is over all a complete and fully featured device as per the price tag. However, there are certain flaws like no microSD slot, old processor but these flaws doesn’t let the performance of the ZUK Z1 down. The phone still features much better configuration as compared to the other devices of the same range.

Lenovo ZUK Z1 is priced as Rs 13,499 and will be available on Amazon from May 26. The device is much likely expected to compete with Lenovo Moto G4 Plus, LeEco Le 1s Eco, Xiaomi Mi4, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and many other smartphones of the same range.